Like a stone on the beach
she picked him up,
and took him home.
He filled her with new life,
and they held companionable
hands, two became four.
Beneath the bubble,
Poisons devoured him in relentless nibbles,
and the doctor said his only hope
was a healing journey
to a new way of life.
But toward,
is also away,
and children waved good-bye
to their skipping stone,
who crossed an ocean and
disappeared into time.
Who knew
when love first entangled
that rapture yields both
blessing and anguish?
Anticipated joy
dashed by disability,
disease, dread,
death.
Watching beloved baby
suffer
and the love that begat
all the suffering
lies so tangled
in anguish
that it’s difficult to
find it at all.
I know
you’re broken.
I see the fracture lines
behind your eyes
I feel the seepage
leaking from the crack in your soul.
I have
needle, thread
glue
and hope.
I’ll share.
With your cold grey touch,
my pain oozes up
in a thin crimson line
and drips
…………away
.……………….drop
………………….by
………………..drop.
.
.
.
.
FYI—>This is persona
You stand against the
wall, arms crossed, sardonic smile
immune to laughter.
.
You’ve seen darkness that
they can only imagine,
and you are hardened
.
from the admiration
of flirting gazes because
your heart is cold,
.
Frozen by bad maternity
and noncommittal
paternity.
.
Their bad judgements burn
within your heart until
destroying misery
.
means destroying
everything you should love,
innocent or guilty,
.
and then it means
flash firing your future,
scarring your life upon ours,
.
like a victim of
Hiroshima’s bombs whose life
vanishes in an
.
instant, leaving only
a silhouette, burnt white
on blackened walls.
.
.
I’m still processing the recent murder/suicide of a former student. The idea of an image being frozen in memory by tragedy called to mind the silhouettes created in Hiroshima when people’s shadoes were left, though their bodies were vaporized. While at first glance a free verse, the poem has some form: each triplet stanza follows the haiku syllable count (17 syllables per stanza) to reiterate this idea.
head in vice
waves of fire engulf me,
then ebb, and I’m left drenched
boiling in my skin
head in vice
.
.
I’m home sick today. This is why. 😦 These debilitating waves have been coming all morning. It’s horrible. I was in bed until noon, when the need for pain killer forced me to move. It is not pretty. I hope you’re having a much better day!
Shawn L. Bird 